


floating out to wonderland

by escherzo



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Ace Subtype: It's Complicated, Anal Sex, Canon Asexual Character, Character Study, Cuddling, Established Relationship, M/M, background past Jon/OMCs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:48:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27222979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escherzo/pseuds/escherzo
Summary: Martin leans down and kisses the top of his head. “Would you have picked me, if I'd been on one of your sites?”“Yes,” Jon says, thumb stroking back and forth across Martin's bare chest. “But I wasn't very good at—understanding myself at first, back then. So I'm glad you weren't.”It's nice to not have to pretend I'm getting something out of this that I don't need, he doesn't say, but he thinks he will someday. If Martin doesn't push him for it, understands it enough for that, then it doesn't matter.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 17
Kudos: 208





	floating out to wonderland

**Author's Note:**

> happy ace week 2020! sexuality is complex and interesting (or: in which jon used to hook up a lot, and still might again someday, and the reasons behind that are complicated) 
> 
> i have got to stop posting right into ao3 dead hours (i say as i post my 100th fic. you would think i would have learned by now!)

“Hey,” Martin says softly. “Do what makes you feel good, okay?”

In the dim light of the fading sun, Jon can just see the curve of his gentle smile as he stares up at Jon, the way his sweaty curls tumble around him in a ginger halo and cling to his sweaty forehead. His cheeks are pink and his plush lips, bitten kiss-red, hang open a touch as he takes in a shuddering breath, tightening his hands as they curve around Jon's bare hips and press into the small give of his flesh. They're not holding him in place, just guiding, and Jon closes his eyes and nods and rolls his hips, slow, so slow, feeling the way the pleasure warms him and spikes just right as he rocks back down onto the thick, drugging weight of Martin's cock inside him. 

Martin's hands tighten on his hips, just a fraction, but otherwise he stays still, letting Jon take his pleasure, and Jon watches the way his chest rises and falls and reaches out to pet his fingers through the hair on Martin's chest. The room around them is still and quiet, only the faint huffing sounds of Jon's breath and Martin's quiet, plaintive noises and the gentle back and forth creaking of the bed as it rocks and dips to fill it as the night creeps in around them. 

“I want--” Martin begins, and Jon leans down to kiss him, shuddering at the way it makes Martin's cock drag inside him. “What do you need?”

“Just this,” Jon says softly and rolls his hips again, but his movements are slowing, and for a long moment he just lets himself stay there, cradled so gently by Martin's big hands, the pressure of Martin inside him. He won't get off on this. He never does; that's not how this works, but that's alright. It's what he wants.

“Is that enough?” Martin asks as Jon slows, and Jon nods and rises up, letting Martin slip out of his arse with a slick sound that makes his cheeks heat before rolling over onto his stomach, hips raised. 

“Go on,” he says, and when Martin slides back inside him and begins to move with more purpose, he closes his eyes and lets it take him over. It's the only time when he doesn't have to _think._ Just has to lie there and feel, an instrument of pleasure, there to be a body that can make Martin feel good. Martin's hands are braced next to his sides and he reaches out as best as he can and entwines his fingers with Martin's as Martin fucks him harder, punctuating his thrust with an uneven, shaky little moan. 

Jon doesn't come when Martin does, or after, and Martin doesn't protest, or try to help, or ask him if he needs more. He holds Jon instead, and they come down together, pressed slick skin to skin, the overwhelming heat of Martin's body all around them and his big hands stroking up and down Jon's back.

“Thank you,” Jon says, and Martin kisses the back of his neck and echoes it with a little laugh. 

*

It's complicated. But it's always _been_ complicated.

“It's okay if you don't want to,” Georgie told him, many times, until she stopped trying to talk about it at all, when they drifted apart, with diverging friendships and diverging lives and the big, tangled knot of _it's complicated_ a great weight between them like another body in their bed. 

It worked like this, after; Jon would distract himself from the stress of the new job in Research by staying up far too late working or staying up far too late on the weekends drinking, and in either circumstance, half out of his head and with his normal boundaries lowered, he would end up on dating sites. His coworkers made jokes about _stuffy_ and _stick-up-his-arse_ , and yet somehow spending hours messaging strangers online was perfectly compatible with a life where no one asked about his dating life because they assumed that he didn't have one and would say something that would set everyone off giggling if they tried to ask. Eventually, he settled into a role, a place in their lives, that didn't feel like it needed an actor behind it, but the messages continued. 

He didn't have a _type_ , so much as just a feeling. The right quote in their profile, or a picture holding a tiny kitten, or just something in the face that said _yes, you will do_. Over time, it went from mostly women to mostly men; approaching women was less certain, more of a dance with steps he didn't know how to match. But the men would talk to him about anything, for hours, let him spill his half-formed thoughts and nervous feelings and worries about his life into a chat box where he could stop answering if he wanted, delete his profile and move onto another site if it felt too close. 

When the first asked “do you want to get coffee sometime?” he wasn't sure why he said yes, and wasn't sure why he kept saying yes later, back at the man's apartment, rubbing slow and uncertain over his cock through his jeans as they watched a movie Jon was only half paying attention to. There was no spark, but he found, abruptly, that there didn't need to be. The man he hooked up with, who didn't know his real name and never asked for his, was happy to accept a shake of the head when he reached out to reciprocate and still hold him close after, skin to skin on an old, narrow mattress in a tiny flat that smelled of stale smoke. 

The one hookup turned into two, and then into three. Never with the same person; he would kiss them and thank them for a nice time, and let their memory fade into something pleasant and warm and hazy and not message them again, and mostly that was fine. There were men barely out of college and men twice his age with thick bellies and thick beards that rubbed against his thighs until he got oversensitive and tugged them back up by the hair to let them fuck him. Some of them got self-conscious about the way he never got off. Mostly, they were happy enough to find a warm body to spend the night with that it didn't seem to matter much to them. 

Sometimes he said “I'm trying to figure out if I'm straight” in his profile, or his messages. It seemed to help. Sometimes, he'd steal off to the bathroom during dinner and work himself up and hope the arousal would last long enough to make things easier. 

What they all were, he realized eventually, was _lonely_. Alone and adrift in a big city they didn't know the shape of, or suddenly finding their beds empty after years of marriage, or just uncertain of how to be close to someone. He wasn't attracted to them, but he found himself seeking them out anyway, and over time that got easier. They were taller than him by a head or so short that they barely came up to his shoulders or just the same height as him, perfectly interlocking puzzle pieces. They were bare, hairy, rail-thin, chubby, with dark hair or light or none at all. Sometimes they were kind and sometimes they were quiet and sometimes they would slap his arse and hiss at him that he was a slut and he would close his eyes and push back into their cock as they slid it inside him, open and willing for them. 

“I don't like sex,” he told himself once, out loud, staring up at the ceiling in his little rickety flat. He didn't think about them when he got himself off in the shower in the mornings, and he didn't get off with them, and he could look at them without feeling anything. He'd received more badly-photographed dicks in his inbox than he could count, and they were unremarkable. Just bodies. “I don't like sex,” he said again, “but I keep having it.” It didn't make him uncomfortable to think about it, exactly, but it was a knot that he couldn't untangle, and so he picked at it, over and over, trying to puzzle it out. 

When he was on his knees, his hair gripped tight by a stranger, he wasn't thinking about anything at all, and in many ways, that was easier. 

*

Martin was lonely too.

That wasn't _why_ , but the first time, it felt familiar. 

*

“Do you ever think about hooking up again?” Martin asks much later, into the stillness of the night, one arm still wrapped loosely around Jon, and Jon tucks himself in closer, chasing away the chill of the autumn air. He rests a hand over Martin's chest, feeling the steady thump of his heartbeat. 

“Sometimes,” he says, eyes closing, and Martin shifts, pulling the blanket up a little higher around the both of them. “Not a lot of options in the village.”

Martin laughs a little at that. “What, Lewis down at the shop isn't your dream man?”

“That's still you,” Jon says, cheeks flushing at the words even as they leave his mouth. “It was—nice, but.”

“What did you like about it?” Martin asks.

Jon hesitates for a long moment, worrying a bit of the blanket in between his fingers. “It's—well, it's.” 

“... complicated?” Martin says, and Jon nods. “I never really wanted to do that when I was younger. It seemed like, like so much _pressure_ , you know? Is it easier if you know you're not attracted to them going in?” 

“Do you think it would make it easier?” Jon finds himself honestly curious. 

“Unless they got weird about it—maybe? Sometimes I'd go on dates and I'd stress so much about, you know, what if I'm not as into them as I thought, is it just going to be awkward the whole time, do I just try to sneak away after the movie or something?”

Jon blinks. There's a dance to that sort of thing, an interplay that he's never known the rhythm for, not without the music, and yet-- “I... hadn't thought about it that way. I liked the closeness. Not having to think for a while. Getting to talk to someone who would be with you for the night, even if you were strange, or didn't know the right words to say, because they knew they'd be getting sex out of it in the end. A lot of men in London are, ah. Too lonely to be very picky.” He smiles, a little strained. 

Martin leans down and kisses the top of his head. “Would you have picked me, if I'd been on one of your sites?”

“Yes,” Jon says, thumb stroking back and forth across Martin's bare chest. “But I wasn't very good at—understanding myself at first, back then. So I'm glad you weren't.” _It's nice to not have to pretend I'm getting something out of this that I don't need_ , he doesn't say, but he thinks he will someday. If Martin doesn't push him for it, understands it enough for that, then it doesn't matter.

“I'm still not sure I get it, exactly?” Martin admits into Jon's hair, making his scalp tingle a little. “But if you ever want to again, I don't mind, okay?” 

Jon smiles. “I'm not sure I get it entirely myself. But—thank you. I love you.” 

“Love you too,” Martin says, and the buzz of his voice against Jon's head makes him squirm a little, like he's being tickled, and it seems only fair to turn the gentle caress of Martin's bare skin into a tickle of his own, and Martin yelps, trying to bat at his hands. 

Joy bubbles up inside him like a welling spring, and when Martin starts tickling him back, it's only half the reason he's laughing.


End file.
